PDF Tools

Compress PDF

Makes a PDF smaller in your browser. The main mode redraws every page as a compressed image, which is what shrinks a scan or a photo-heavy document dramatically — at the cost of the text no longer being selectable. A second mode rewrites the file and clears its metadata while leaving the pages untouched. The file is never uploaded.

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Process

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Processed in your browser — your file is not uploaded.

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Up to 1 files

How should it be compressed?

Strength

Readable and much smaller

Each page becomes a picture. This is what makes a scan or a photo-heavy PDF shrink dramatically — but the text stops being selectable, searchable or editable afterwards. Keep your original. If you need the text to stay text, choose “Keep text selectable”.

How to Use

1Drop one PDF onto the upload area. Only one file at a time.
2Choose 'Make it much smaller' for a scan or photo-heavy file, or 'Keep text selectable' to only strip metadata.
3If you chose the first, pick a strength: Less compression, Balanced or Smallest file.
4Click Compress PDF and read the result, which reports the old and new size.
5Download compressed.pdf and open it to check the pages are still readable.

About this tool

Updated October 6, 2026

Why most PDF compressors cannot help a scan

A scanned page is a photograph. Unless a tool replaces that photograph with a smaller one, there is almost nothing else in the file to remove.

People are often surprised that running a 20 MB scan through a compressor returns 19.8 MB. The reason is simple: nearly all of that file is image data, and rewriting the document structure around it saves a rounding error. The only way a browser can make a real difference is to redraw each page at a lower resolution and store it as a compressed image, which is what the main mode here does. It is a blunt instrument, and that is precisely why it works where gentler methods do nothing.

Choosing a strength

Balanced suits most scans. Drop to Smallest file only when a strict upload limit forces it, and read the result before sending it.

The three settings render pages at 150, 120 and 96 dots per inch. On our four-page test scan of 7.7 MB they produced 2.5 MB, 1.1 MB and 514 KB. Higher settings keep small print crisper; lower ones soften it. Because the result depends completely on your own document, the only reliable test is to open the compressed file and read the smallest text that matters — a reference number, a date, a signature. If it is hard to read, step back up a level.

What you give up, stated plainly

Selectable text, searchable text, and the ability to edit or copy from the page. The pages become pictures.

This matters more for some documents than others. A scanned receipt or an ID copy loses nothing you were using. A contract you need to search, or a report someone will quote from, loses something real. Keep the original file in both cases: the compressed copy is for sending, not for storing. If the document needs to stay searchable and still be smaller, it is usually better to split it into parts than to flatten it.

When a PDF will not get smaller

A text-only PDF is already tiny, and turning its pages into images makes it far bigger. The tool says so rather than hiding it.

Text stored as text costs a few kilobytes a page; the same page stored as a picture costs hundreds. In our testing a 4.9 KB text document came back as 717 KB after rasterising. If you see the result panel report that the file grew, switch to Keep text selectable — though on a document like that there is usually nothing worth removing, and the honest answer is that it is already as small as it needs to be. If a form gives you an exact limit such as 100 KB or 2 MB, Compress PDF to a Set Size searches for the best setting that fits and tells you plainly when it cannot.

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Features

Two modes: redraw pages as images for a large reduction, or rewrite the file and keep text selectable
Three strengths at 150, 120 and 96 dots per inch
Page sizes in points are preserved, so the document still prints at its original size
Reports the old and new file size, and says so plainly when a file did not get smaller
One PDF per run; a long document takes a few seconds per page
Runs in your browser, so the PDF is never uploaded

FAQ

How much smaller will my PDF get?

It depends entirely on what is inside it. On a four-page scan-like test file of 7.7 MB, Less compression gave 2.5 MB, Balanced gave 1.1 MB and Smallest file gave 514 KB — reductions of 68, 85 and 93 percent. A PDF that is mostly plain text will not shrink at all, and may grow.

Why does my text stop being selectable?

Because the smaller mode redraws each page as a picture. That is exactly what removes the bulk from a scan, but a picture of a word is not a word any more. If you need to search or copy the text, use 'Keep text selectable', or keep the original alongside the compressed copy.

My file got bigger. What happened?

You compressed a text-heavy PDF with the image mode. Text is extremely compact to store as text and much heavier as a picture, so the file grows — in our testing a 4.9 KB text PDF became 717 KB. The tool tells you when this happens. Switch to 'Keep text selectable'.

Does 'Keep text selectable' make files much smaller?

No, and it does not claim to. It rewrites the file and clears the document properties, which helps only when the file carried a lot of metadata or an inefficient structure. Images are left exactly as they are.

Is my PDF uploaded to a server?

No. Both modes run entirely inside your browser, so the document never leaves your device.

Optimize PDF for Web

Re-save a PDF with object streams and optional metadata removal or form flattening.

PDF to JPG

Turn each PDF page into a JPG at 2x scale. Multi-page files download as a ZIP.

Merge PDF

Combine several PDF files into one merged.pdf, in the order you arrange them.

Split PDF

Cut a PDF into page ranges or fixed-size chunks; get a PDF or a ZIP of PDFs.

Compress Image to KB

Bring a photo under an exact size limit such as 20 KB or 100 KB, keeping as much quality as the limit allows.

Compress PDF to a Set Size

Fit a PDF under any size limit from 20 KB to 20 MB, and see plainly when it cannot.

Compress PDF to 200KB

Fit a PDF under 200 KB: a page or two at good quality, five at the floor.